busting the myth of growth hacking magic

Growth Hacking Magic?

Sean Ellis September 17, 2014

CEO of Qualaroo, GrowthHackers.com

Twitter @seanellis

Going Beyond the Hype to Take Your Business to the Next Level

About Me

• Founder/CEO of Qualaroo & GrowthHackers.com

• Previously VP Marketing from customer zero to NASDAQ IPO filing at LogMeIn and Uproar.com

• Then interim marketing exec roles at Dropbox, Lookout and Eventbrite

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Extreme Competition for Attention

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

$140

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US Online Ad Spend per User

3.5x

Rapidly Evolving Channels

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2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130

20

40

60

80

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120

WOM Email

MySpace

Facebook

Craigslist

Twitter

iOS

Android

James Currier

Yet Some Huge Startup Successes

Little or no traditional marketing…

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GROWTH HACKING MAGIC?

No – Rigorous Process of Experimentation

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The Dropbox Growth Story

• Freemium reduced allowable CPA

• Natural advantages to grow with collaboration and sharing

• Catalyze sharing with double sided referral program

• Optimize conversions on sharing loops

• 300 million users with no traditional marketing

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Desperation Drove Startups to Innovate

• Aggressive targets, tight resources

• Traditional approach not realistic

• Had to rethink growth…

The Growth Hacking Playbook

• Experiment with all available growth levers

• Understand what’s driving growth, test to improve it

• Heavy focus on product and optimization

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B2B or B2C?

• Growth hacking isn’t just for consumer-focused companies.

• B2B often requires integration with sales process.

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HubSpot’s Growth Hack – Free Tools

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Yammer – Engineered User-Get-User

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LinkedIn - Engineered User-Get-User

PUTTING GROWTH HACKING TO WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS

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Finding Your Own Growth Hacks

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• Areas of exploration

• Process, team and tools

Some Areas of Exploration

• Platform integrations

• Engineered user-get-user

• Free tools

Examples

25+ M users

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Areas of Exploration (Cont)

• Powered by

• Reverse engineer success

Examples

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Success Data: Airbnb’s Pro Photos

• Airbnb discovered that listings with high-quality photos received 2-3x bookings

• Airbnb invested in professional photography

• Booking activity explodes as desire increases

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Other Growth Studies for Inspiration

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Experimentation is Key to Success

• Generate many ideas for experiments

• Prioritize by impact, confidence & effort

• Balance high impact & high probability tests

GOAL: INCREASED UNITS OF GRATIFICATION

Double Down on Success

• Challenge is not finding many channels that work, but rather finding one.

• Often your best growth opportunity is to double down on what’s already working.

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Growth Team Often Needed

• Multi-disciplinary

• Cross functional

• Evangelize experimentation culture

“Growth team” complements existing marketing team

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Some Helpful Tools

• Analytics — Identify drop-off points and under-performing pages (e.g. Google Analytics, KISSMetrics)

• Qualitative Insights — Uncover the why behind the numbers (e.g. Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey)

• A/B Test — Find better performing combinations to drive conversion rate (e.g. Hubspot, Optimizely)

Relentless Execution of Growth Process

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Key Takeaways

• Emerging marketing challenges require all to rethink growth

• Growth hacking is based experimentation, not silver bullets

• Add process/team to maximize number of experiments

• Get inspiration from data, VOC and what’s working for others

Questions?

THANK YOU.

Sean EllisCEO of Qualaroo

& GrowthHackers.com

Twitter: @seanellis